swap space is low

[gany59]

drs1cv:/ # swapinfo -tam
Mb Mb Mb PCT START/ Mb



TYPE AVAIL USED FREE USED LIMIT RESERVE PRI NAME
dev 10000 5 9995 0% 0 - 1 /dev/vx/dsk/rootdg/s wapvol
reserve - 998 -998
memory 4094 1715 2379 42%
total 14094 2718 11376 19% - 0 -

Hi i got the error message like swap space is low.. i ckecked in my server , the above is the o/p. This is the normal value or high! if its high could anybody tell me how to increase swap space

[James R. Ferguson · Accepted solution]

HI:

I don't see any error. You probably meant that you couldn't fork a process for reason of ENOMEM (errno 12). At the instantiation of a process there must be sufficient swap space to "reserve" should the process every need it.

There are numerous threads describing swap and swap space. If necessary, create another swap space on a volume group other than* vg00. For example:

# lvcreate -C y -r n -L 8092 -n lvol1 /dev/vg01
# swapon -p 0 /dev/vg01/lvol1
# echo "/dev/vg01/lvol1 ... swap pri=0 0 0" >> /etc/fstab

This immediately activates additional swap.

Regards!

...JRF...

[gany59]

Ok James,

The output what i said previously.. so the swap has enough space right ?
please clarrify this .

[Michael Steele_2]

Hi

Your total is 19%.

While it is possible, one in a hundred chance, that you maxed out for a split second, I wouldn't worry about swap until 75% at least.

[Hakki Aydin Ucar]

Look at bottom line ; TOTAL

+ the PCT USED value shown in the total line indicates how much swap space has been actually reserved for swap. When this percentage gets near 100%, processes will not start up (unable to fork process) and new shared memory segments can not be created.

your PCT USED is : %19 it is very good

you have no problem now

[Paul McCleary]

Hi,

Did you get the error message when you attempted to start a process or is the normal workload for this system already up and running?

As people have pointed out your current usage is not that high. You have ~10GB of device swap, while your system only has 4GB of memory, so your physical swap device is more than twice your memory size, which is an often used rule of thumb when sizing this - though you'll find much debate on here on how swap should be best sized.

Regards, Paul